Flash & Female Entrepreneurship (by Lianne Strother)
Just a few months in, 2020 has already seen many big wins for female entrepreneurs.
Buoyed by the success of a record 21 female-founded unicorns in 2019, and companies such as Citibank announcing targeted initiatives to fund female and minority founded companies, the decade is shaping up for exponential growth in the proportion of investments flowing into women-led companies.
But the truth is, in spite of media attention and year after year being dubbed “the Year of the Woman,” these success stories are still too few and far between. With just 1 in 5 companies founded by women globally, what is it like to be a female-identifying entrepreneur within the current venture ecosystem?
@UChicago
At UChicago, the 2020 College New Venture Challenge is underway, with many competing teams led by some of the campus's most kickass women. Our very own Midway Ventures alum, and current College New Venture Challenge competitor, Malavika Rajagopal sat down with me to share her experiences founding Flash, a luxury athleisure line tailored for both fashion and functionality.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Flash?
Malavika: I first came up with the concept during my internship last summer. While working 70 hours a week and having little time to spend with friends, I realized that when I did have time to go out, I just wanted to have a good time and not worry about the hassle involved with hard-to-wash or uncomfortable yet stylish clothing. I tried to seek out a clothing line or company that could provide me with going out clothing that was both fashionable and functional, and there is just nothing currently available. After speaking to many of my female friends who shared this same problem, I realized that there was a real demand that was not being met for this great concept. I’ve always been interested in retail, fashion, and entrepreneurship, so I decided to start working on the execution of this concept immediately, and the last 6 months have seen Flash go from just an idea to expecting our upcoming limited release very soon (!)
Q: How did you move so quickly from having your initial concept to execution?
Malavika: One of the things that was really crazy was just how powerful the idea resonated with other women. I don’t have design experience and as a college student do not have access to a lot of money to fund this project, but the initial freelance designer I reached out to was so passionate about the idea that she did the work pro-bono and connected us with everyone we currently work with in our supply chain and sourced for us this amazing moisture-wicking and comfortable material. This is a concept that distinctly serves women, and we have been very fortunate to leverage this mission to find and work with women who can relate to our experiences and believe in Flash.
Q: What do you think will be your biggest challenges in this space?
Malavika: In creating such a female-centric concept and products, it has often been difficult to pitch to male investors. We know there is a demand for our products, but it has been a challenge to figure out how to best communicate to investors this potential when the concept of a luxury athleisure line is not something they can interface directly with as a consumer. Sometimes it can just take having one female VC in the room to convince the other investors of our line’s ability to solve an issue that affects a lot of women, but that is not a situation that can be relied on when in 2020 the VC space is still largely male-dominated. There is a big difference between who our target customers are and who our target VC firm is, so we have really had to focus on providing the financial projections and metrics to prove the sales potential and product market fit that we know and believe in.
Competing in the College New Venture Challenge has really allowed our team to get the structure and guidance we needed to grow Flash from being just a great concept to operating Flash like serious entrepreneurs and figuring out how we can convince investors of our confirmed market demand and value.
Our industry choice also creates inherent challenges as well, as creating an apparel company does not open us to a lot of opportunities for venture capital investment. After testing out our prototypes, we received a lot of great feedback regarding the versatility of our pieces across different occasions, so we are really excited to explore the idea of Flash as more of a retail group concept with different subsidiary companies, which has brought us a lot more interest from VCs.
Q: Do you have any advice for students looking to start their own companies?
Malavika: While Flash does take up a lot of my time, it truly does not feel like work because this is an industry I love and an industry I interact with everyday, and I really feel passionately about our concept. If you can see potential in an industry you care deeply about, you do not need the technical know-how to start something. For me, it was the motivation of seeing a passion project called Into the Gloss turn into Glossier and eventually reach unicorn valuation, largely as a result of founder Emily Weiss’s deep interest in the cosmetics industry and the potential she saw in it.
As a student, you are given such a buffer of ability to explore your interests and have incredible resources that you will not get in the real world, so I would strongly encourage anyone with an idea to go out and build their business. Flash has shown me how deeply I care about the retail space and how I can practically explore a career within it, and that’s not something I could have gotten out of my college experience had I not acted on my initial idea for Flash.
Flash in the Future
Thank you so much Malavika for sharing your experiences with the Midway blog, and best of luck to the Flash team as they roll out their limited release—I know I cannot wait to finally own some of these amazing pieces.